Iran says oil firms need local partners

Economy - Iran says its new format of oil sector contracts requires foreign companies to form partnerships with local firms over the projects they plan to take up in the country.

“In future upstream projects, no foreign company will ever take up a project without a local partner,” Bijan Zangeneh, Iran’s oil minister, has been quoted by the media as saying.

“This is meant to add to the abilities of the local companies and facilitate the transfer of technology,” he added.

Zangeneh further emphasized that a large number of foreign companies have already shown interest in Iran’s new oil and gas projects.

He emphasized that the companies are expressing a serious interest to take up new projects in Iran.

Iran's new oil sector contracts – generally referred to as the Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC) – will be a modification of the traditional buy-back risk service contracts and have been specifically designed to increase the attractiveness of Iranian oil projects for foreign investors.

The IPC offers different stages of exploration, development and production to the contractors as an integrated package.

Also, Iran will set up joint ventures with the contractors to extract reserves at the fields. The contractors will be accordingly reimbursed through a share of production from the fields.

Earlier, Zangeneh told reporters that a conference will be held in Tehran in the near future to present the IPC to international corporations.

Zangeneh also said a second conference will be held in London in February 2016 to introduce the new format of Iranian contracts to those who have missed the Tehran presentation.